Online Chinese Game BNB Records 700,000 Users
Thanks to simon for the heads up that casual online game BNB has a record of 700,000 concurrent users. The Chinese game is a casual online experience where families pit themselves against other families. For comparison the game Eve Online regularly has 10,000 concurrent users.
I think they're talking about single server (or single "universe") games. Everquest and DAOC and all them only host about 3,000 people on each server or "universe".
Most likely though, this game is not a concurant world, it's probably instanced it most cases, where the play areas are split off from the rest of the world much like Gunbound where there's basically different chat channels that you can join games in (which, once in game, you no longer exist on the server).
As a minor side note, Eve Online is the only US based game that runs a single server, single universe game (largest online population) which is probably why they picked that one (there's many lesser known korean games, japan, etc).
Why not pick something more akin to the product in question... like Yahoo games or something. Eve On-line is a niche player in a niche of gaming. BNB is a casual game targeting families.
Nevertheless, the numbers indicate there is a very healthy group of technologically enabled families in China. I'm just curious what a more comparable service in the states would have on it.
Sig under construction since 1998.
It's popular among Korean kids also. It's basically an online Bomberman (Nexon bought the rights to Bomberman from Hudsonsoft AFAIK) that tracks your win/lose stats and rewards you with the game's currency for good play. You can use the currency to buy different accessories/clothes for your character. The Korean client is a free download (http://www.crazyarcade.com/) and there's no monthly charge (though you can pay real money in exchange for the game's currency). The client does have some sort of spyware attached to it (at least that's what Ad Aware says) and you have to be able to read Korean.